Remove the recharge from Rest

The only possible gameplay down side i see to this is its possible to be abused in game. Say i take a buncha damage but im not dead yet. So i run or fly off (i guess were talking teens here or level 6 with vet rewards) get enough distance to rest do so then run right back. Rinse/repeat as needed.

Right now I am limited by the recharge time for the ability to do this on a consistant basis. If there was no recharge i literally probably could do this 3-4 times during a single mob fight if i needed to. By the time we get travel powers we well outspeed most villians. And with the booster packs i would say most of us do even without travel powers.

Otherwise i love the idea, anything to limit downtime is great IMO.

I wasn't only talking about endurance, and I wasn't necessarily saying it was always an every mob thing. And I did say it depended on AT and other things, such as whether you're fighting in a group or solo, what enemies you're fighting, and so on.

No, I'm saying your guess as to what the majority of players are experiencing may not be accurate.


But they didn't only datamine debt. They datamined XP performance. The average blaster performance lagged significantly from the average performance across the board (actually the average blaster performance for all blaster powerset combinations for all level ranges in and out of teams lagged significantly from the average, which is an even stronger statement). That can't be the result of a minority of outliers.


Technically, within encounters to minimize what I have to do between encounters. In other words, I don't tend to play to just barely survive a single fight, which I know will put me in a position to have to rest between fights. Even with stamina and health, doing so would still mean a significant amount of downtime.


Now look who's taking the argument to the extreme. I supported the initial recharge reduction of Rest. In fact, I argued at the time that the correct recharge value for Rest should be closer to 60-90 seconds. That would be congruent with it being up about every three to five fights or so (at lower levels) and could be slottable if you wanted to be up every other fight or so. If you really want to rest every fight, you could choose to pay the slots to do so and take Hasten, you'd just have to pay for that option just like you do every other game play option.

What I'm saying is the notion that this game is designed or intended for fights to be balanced around survive-or-die without inter-fight consequences is false, nor is it something I would like to see the game move towards. There are arguments for adjusting the recharge of rest that are valid even within the confines of the current game's design. But I reject the argument that "downtime ain't fun, so the devs are idiots for keeping it around." Its the same argument used for so many changes that are nothing more than personal preference attempting to masquerade as game design savvy. And it makes presumptions dangerous to make. CO has a virtually zero downtime gameplay mechanism. It doesn't specifically seem to be appreciated by noticably more players than CoH's constrained resource system (and I'm not making a straight subscriber comparison here: I'm specifically talking about whether the average player would, in isolation from all other factors, prefer CO's resource system over CoH's system, all other things being equal). Changing this kind of thing just because everyone "knows" downtime is bad is specifically something that I was pretty sure wasn't a safe assumption, and CO demonstrated to me that caution was justified. This is definitively not a gameplay axiom.

The fact you offered doesn't support or refute what I stated. A lot of Blasters might have been at the debt cap because they suck. As you stated there's a lot of factors. All I said is that the majority of characters post-30 virtually eliminate downtime.


The fact is that after a certain point, you don't have to play that way except on certain fights. At low levels those same fights are much worse.


Interestingly enough, you haven't stated why you think downtime is desirable.

Lastly, I take a small amount of umbrage with the underlined. I presented my suggestion in a respectful fashion. I did not suggest that the devs are idiots and I really would appreciate if you not stretch things I say like that. I don't do it to you.

How do you know that? What evidence do you have to back up that statement? Is it simply self-evident in your mind?

Arcanaville brought up the blaster thing to demonstrate that what we think we may "know" about the game is not always true. It was meant to caution you against believing with certainty that "the majority of characters post-30 virtually eliminate downtime." It is possible you are right. It is also possible you are wrong.

Whatever. I know what I observe. And that is that in the post-30 game, six years of teams have moved pretty much non-stop. My anecdotal evidence isn't discounted by Arcanaville's statement.

And all that is irrelevant to the issue at hand, but I do so appreciate you all bumping the thread with irrelevant observations!

Without dissent, thread like this die. So thank you. Please feel free to share any other thoughts you may have.

When someone is asking for a major change in the core resource management paradigm, which could have extensive repercussions, the onus is on them to demonstrate conclusively why the change is necessary. Not just desirable, not just 'a good idea', but necessary. This has not been done.

It is not the responsibility of those who do not see that change necessary to defend it. All they have to do is point out flaws in the logic stating that the change is needed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I'm just going to leave this here where you can look at it.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Death is also not desirable. Its there specifically because its not desirable.

Given that Praetoria City lacks a difficulty changing person of any fashion...

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's asuming you didn't "know" Blasters were lagging behind and terrible to play, especially solo. I have a hard time imagining how anyone who played a Blaster solo before the Defiance changes would not have noticed that, as even Blaster proponents at the time acknowledged this, but argued it was a benefit because Blasters were "hard mode."

If the argument here is "we thought Blasters were great but they actually sucked, so that's proof we don't know," then that's a very poor example because it takes what was blatantly obvious to anyone who actually played, and to a fair few who just observed.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Do you realise what kind of argument you are making here? Death is undesirable, and largely because it takes time to recover from it and travel back to the mission. Ending a fight with low bars is not desirable because it takes time to recover from it and wait for health and endurance to come back. In theory, and indeed in practice from what I've seen, death and a certain kind of victory become equal. Because I can assure you - I've taken MORE time to sit on my hands and wait for my endurance to recover than I would have taken if I'd died and flown back to the hospital. Does that not strike you as *** backwards?

Here's the thing - right now, if I have a self-resurrection power like, say, Rise of the Phoenix and I've slotted it, it is more advantageous for me to DIE towards the end of the fight, resurrect and be at almost full health and endurance, than it is for me to keep on fighting and win, but then have to rest when Rest isn't available. Any time it is more advantageous to me to take my hands off the keyboard and die instead of fighting on, something is wrong with the system. Something that you really ought to be able to see, Arcana, and that baffles me.

Disincentive for playing "wrong" is important, obviously, otherwise it's a sandbox and not a game. However, this disincentive should not be intentionally designed to waste people's time and irritate them. I do not need to be "punished" by a game that I pay to play. And, yes, I went there. I can deal with consequences for dying. I can deal with consequences for playing poorly. But those consequences do not have to, and indeed shouldn't, constitute me being given a time out in the corner unable to do anything.

If I die, I travel back from the hospital. It makes sense, and above all else, it gives me something to do while time is passing. If I win but don't have full bars, I wait. And while I wait, I have absolutely ZERO activities I could be doing. It'd be the same as if after every fight I got a loading bar that lasted for 30-60 seconds, because it's the exact same thing. And, no, zone loading does not take anywhere near this long, not on my rig.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Which the Evil Geko already did in his original post, if you'd like to go back and read it. His positives have so far not only not been proven to be false, but have not even been addressed, not that I could determine. Instead, the counter-argument basically consists of "Champions Online did it, so we shouldn't" and "downtime is good for the game." Sorry, Arcana, but that's what it comes down to.

At this point, I dare say the Geko has the right to ask for justification.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No, it's not my responsibility to provide statistical evidence that I have no access too. It's my responsibility to explain why I believe my suggestion is sound and for the devs to compare that to their proprietary statistical evidence and decide if my idea is sound.

This BS argument has been brought up in the various other arguments I've made over the years and it still makes no sense.

Right. Death is a penalty. It's a marker that, "Hey hero/villain you didn't win."

It's interesting to me that every MMO out there with death penalties, including this one have made their penalties less severe over time. But the existence of death as a penalty, provides a good reason for making recover downtime as minimal as possible.

Death provides a time penalty in the form of experience debt (or eating rested exp) and possibly travel time back to the point of defeat. What's the difference there? You can play away the penalty. The assumption always has to be that the core activity of the game is fun so working off debt should likewise be entertaining. That plus the fact that the penalties for death have been lowered make death a reasonable penalty for defeat.

But recover downtime puts you in a situation where you have to STOP playing the game. You can go back for inspirations, perhaps, but that's often going to be longer than it takes for your health to recharge naturally.

Thanks for all the negative responses. Truly. I hate making suggestions that die immediately.

If you're at a level that you have a self-rez available, and you're still relying on Rest to keep your endurance or health up, then you're doing something seriously wrong. Your entire statement there, Sam, consists of nothing but hyperbole in an attempt to bolster your argument. Just like most of the other claims people make that they have to use rest after every single fight, and they're "always" waiting around for rest to recharge.

Heck, just now, just before starting this post, I finished an entire mayhem mission on a lvl 18 EM/WP stalker. Guess how many times I used rest? Zero. Zip. Nada. Didn't need it. No Stamina or Quick Recovery. Finished every side mission, fought every ambush & every spawn I came across.

There are options for dealing with endurance & HP management that already exist in the game. Having an always available rest is completely unnecessary. One consequence of having Rest on a recharge timer, is that it gives players some incentive to learn to use the already existing tools to manage their endurance.

Seriously; Where to people keep getting this idea from?! It's not true! Go in game, go up to a mob of even con or higher, and hit rest. In fact, to prove it, go to the warzone or somewhere and walk up to the biggest, nastiest Rikti you can find. Then rest in front of it.
You. Will. Die.
One shot, one kill. End of story.
There is no one-shot rule. Or if there is, its only in very extreme cases.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I just thought I'd failed to notice it. Since I haven't needed to change difficulty in praetoria, I didn't go looking. But then, I typically don't in normal play, either, so it seemed like a pertinent question to ask, since that's something other people do that I usually don't, at least, not until late 20s (at the earliest).

Good to know, thanks for confirming.

Wrong? At that point the character is one that derives strength from defeat, as long as defeat isn't too frequent. It makes perfect sense from here.

I mean, c'mon, "Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" isn't just a great quote, it's a genre trope for a reason. And under these circumstances, the game supports it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Incorrect. That is not "one shot" as far as the code is concerned.

You see one attack. You are getting HIT with two simultaneous ones. Watch your combat log. For Rikti, it's typically slashing and energy. The game sees it as two attacks, two "hits" of damage, and you will die.

If it's 100% energy, 100% lethal, whatever, you will not, so long as you have no damage from any other source.

Technicality? Yes. But it still makes the "one hit code" statement true.

I'll put up screenshots I just took.
1: The "two hits" a rikti sword does, lethal and energy.



Note the *two sources* of damage - the "Hit with lethal" and "Hit with energy" damage. Two hits. Yes, one attack, but two bursts of damage.

2. A level 11 stalker (260 hit points) requiring two hits from a Headman Gunman rifle (one shot of 803.95 points of energy damage) to be killed *because of the one shot code.*



Note I have the combat attributes window up. I SK'd her to get her to the zone, then dropped team and let her take a swing at the *single* Rikti Headman Gunman I kept around there. They do *one* hit of damage with their rifle - energy only.

See the amount of damage?
See her hit points?
See that she had to get hit with TWO attacks for this enemy, 35 levels or so above her, doing more than three times her hit points in damage, to kill her? That is the result of the one shot code.

If I hadn't killed the mezmerist from the first one (since I wanted to isolate an enemy doing a single damage type,) he would have killed her in one attack... one attack that does two "hits" of damage, one energy, one lethal.

If you don't believe that, and want to insist there's "no one shot code," make a level 1 *anything* on Pinnacle and I'll set it up so you get hit with the same thing. You'll see you require two single-damage-type attacks to be killed, even if the attacks hit for more damage than you have HP.

See my Guides and Tutorials

What people are arguing for isn't the simplified fight or die model that you seem to be interpreting them as arguing for. Rest, even with an instant recharge, still represents a loss of time (which is exactly what death is). If you survive with 100% of your resources intact, you can can head to the next fight without waiting. If you survive with 10% of your resources intact, you have to spend the next 17 seconds using Rest. The use of Rest is, in and of itself, a cost that you are having to pay. If you manage your health and endurance intelligently, you won't have to pay the cost in downtime as often, which still provides a reason for you to take powers that supplant Rest as a primary source of after combat recovery while those same powers still provide you with in combat recovery capabilities. Removing the recharge wouldn't somehow remove the impetus to make a character more self-sufficient. All it would do would be to make Rest a viable but still suboptimal alternative, which, unless the devs honestly want everyone to take Stamina and/or a powerset with an endurance assistance power (which I think they've outright said they don't want to do), would be an intelligent thing to do.

There is, actually - I forget when it was implemented, but you can't go from 100% health to dead in a single tick of damage. If a power has two damage components, however, yes, you will die - if you have, say 300HP and get hit by a power that does 1000HP damage, you'll get knocked down to 1HP. But if the power does one tick 1000HP damage and one tick of 1HP, then you'll be dead.